{"id":912,"date":"2014-02-05T18:57:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T18:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/02\/how-a-poor-theology-of-the-cross-created-americas-broken-justice-system.html"},"modified":"2014-02-05T18:57:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T18:57:00","slug":"how-a-poor-theology-of-the-cross-created-americas-broken-justice-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/02\/how-a-poor-theology-of-the-cross-created-americas-broken-justice-system.html","title":{"rendered":"How A Poor Theology Of The Cross Created America’s Broken Justice System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Our jails are overflowing, people are receiving life sentences for minor crimes under three strikes laws, racial disparities leave minority populations disproportionately represented in the incarcerated population, and we\u2019re so obsessed with killing that we\u2019re now using untested concoctions of drugs that recently took a\u00a0condemned inmate more than 20 minutes to finally die<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n
Our system isn\u2019t working. It might surprise you however, to understand\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0we arrived at such a broken justice system.<\/span><\/div>\n
We got here because of poor theology. While we do have a separation of church and state, it is undeniable that through the ages Christian theology has influenced laws, patterns of thinking, and social structures \u2014 especially in early America.<\/span><\/div>\n
One such theology is a theology of the cross. In theological circles we call it \u201catonement theology,\u201d which has been an area of theology that has been consistently morphing for the past 2000 years. You and I most likely grew up with one specific type of atonement theology which has tended to dominate the landscape since the 16th century or so \u2014 an atonement metaphor called \u201cpenal substitution.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
If you grew up within conservative evangelicalism or have seen even one episode of Way of the Master, you are familiar with the penal substitution theory of atonement even if you don\u2019t recognize the theological name I\u2019m using for it. It usually isn\u2019t described as an \u201catonement metaphor\u201d but rather is passed off as the \u201cGospel\u201d itself. It goes something like this (if you grew up a fundie, you might remember \u201cRomans Road\u201d to explain it):<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our jails are overflowing, people are receiving life sentences for minor crimes under three strikes laws, racial disparities leave minority populations disproportionately represented in the incarcerated population, and we\u2019re so obsessed with killing that we\u2019re now using untested concoctions of drugs that recently took a\u00a0condemned inmate more than 20 minutes to finally die. Our system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHow A Poor Theology Of The Cross Created America's Broken Justice System<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our jails are overflowing, people are receiving life sentences for minor crimes under three strikes laws, racial disparities leave minority populations\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/02\/how-a-poor-theology-of-the-cross-created-americas-broken-justice-system.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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